February 12, 2001

10:36 AM

Cyber-soulmates under foot, under thumb and under the microscope. I thought my own love life was bizarre..
posted by Perigee (11 comments total)

Good lord, that robot woman thing is horrid.
posted by Hackworth at 11:22 AM on February 12, 2001

Yeah, it reminds me of Metropolis.
posted by sonofsamiam at 12:11 PM on February 12, 2001

The robot woman thing is in fact supposed to be the robot from Metropolis all dressed up. Your dream date is waiting on the Internet!
posted by kindall at 2:44 PM on February 12, 2001

Beth, are you cute? Can I call you?

{ba dump bump}

I suppose this is good counter to fluff, but on the other hand it comes as close as anything I've read in a while to the Ann Landers line: "The Internet is a direct threat to your marriage! If you value your children and God you'll pull the plug!" People have always been perfectly capable of getting themselves or their marriages into trouble without the benefit of TCP/IP. If Jason/Meg (or, hey, Lyn/Steve, or ...) eventually break up, will we see a post-mortem warning against weblogging your way into a relationship?

I just can't conceive of barging into a chatroom looking for women to flirt with. Then again, I feel about the same for bars ... *shrug*
posted by dhartung at 3:39 PM on February 12, 2001

I like this piece on online relationships a lot better than that other, fluffy one. At least it's more realistic, focusing on how such things can sometimes be pathological.

You could remove "online" from those two sentences and be just as true, though.
posted by dagnyscott at 6:07 PM on February 12, 2001

What about this part?:

"Approximately 70% of time on-line is spent in chatrooms or sending e-mail; of these interactions, the vast majority are romantic in nature."

Does this apply to any of you? I've never even been to a chatroom. I do spend a bit of time on email, but the vast majority of my email is pretty far from romantic, sorry to say.
posted by Loudmax at 11:34 PM on February 12, 2001

Those statistics were, of course, approximately pulled out of her bum. I hate it when they do that. It's very unhygenic.
posted by aki at 2:15 AM on February 13, 2001

When I was first on the net, I spent upwards of 10-12 hours a day in a chatroom. Really.

Did wonders for my typing speed, but horrible things for my love life, on the whole. It was eerily easy for me and others on the same chat system to fall for one another quickly and deeply, mostly with unfortunate consequences. But then again, we were all college-age, so that may have had a lot to do with it.

I did manage to make at least one very good friend out of the whole mess, and we're still friends now.

And um, I don't think I'm cute. :) But if you must verify for yourself, I do have a cam (which I just noticed isn't updating, crap!).

Frankly, I'm too big to be cute (6 ft tall).


posted by beth at 8:55 AM on February 13, 2001

Loudmax said:
"Approximately 70% of time on-line is spent in chatrooms or sending e-mail; of these interactions, the vast majority are romantic in nature."

Does this apply to any of you? I've never even been to a chatroom.

Actually, I think the 70% figure is reasonable if you consider the fact that people tend to spend huge amounts of time in chat rooms. A short session might last an hour; normal users chat several hours per day. There are more people than you might expect who spend ten or more hours a day connected. When I used to work for Talk City, we used to make jokes about the housewives who replaced their TV soap operas with online soap operas; they'd log in after breakfast and switch off before going to bed, popping in and out all day between whatever else they were doing.

Even if chatters don't represent the average 'net user, there are enough of them burning enough hours to make a pretty substantial chunk of "time on-line".

Furthermore, there were always at least ten times as many people connected as could be found in the public rooms. Where they were and what they were doing, I leave to your imagination. I don't know if I'd say the "vast majority" of these interactions are romantic - just the majority. It's certainly a substantial chunk of time.

In short, from what I saw working as a chat host, I'd have to say the author's essentially correct. You only see the tip of the iceberg when you arrive in a chat system, and most of what's underneath is flirting and "cybersex."

I felt a little sorry for the article's author, who seems to be afraid of the world he's reporting on. The 'net is the fastest way to find love the world has ever seen, and that's clearly something a lot of people want. If that means a jolt to the old ways of finding and having love, so be it - the old way obviously wasn't doing its job.

-Mars

posted by Mars Saxman at 11:27 AM on February 13, 2001

I've been on the net a looong time. Of my three best friends, two I met at work, and one I met online, on a BBS that had regular get-togethers. On that system I used the chatroom but it was mostly guys and mostly BS'ing. Anyway, after she divorced, we sorta dated but didn't click. She, though, had been married to a man she met online. (These days, somewhat burned, she rarely even surfs, and responds to my e-mails the next time we talk.)

AOL's entire business model for a long time and probably still revolves around chatrooms.

I spent some time working at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The floor brokers there are a real odd bunch, as odd as any group I've encountered outside of -- well, a BBS get-together. ;-) These guys would sit around after floor hours, plow through personal ads on various websites by the case, dispassionately discuss the womens' appearance locker-room style, and horse trade who got to pursue whom, group write the e-mails ... even though none of these guys made any money, hey, they were brokers, so someday they WOULD, right? Anyway, subcultures like this do exist and people can be dogged in their pursuit of l'amour.

I guess you could say that weblogs are my chatroom. ;-)
posted by dhartung at 12:02 PM on February 13, 2001